Chapter 3

Mark stood outside the burned-out wing, his face streaked with soot and something else.

Shock? Or was it relief?

Chloe clung to his arm, sobbing dramatically into his shoulder.

"She was so reckless, Mark," Chloe whispered, loud enough for the nearby officers to hear. "She kept complaining about being cold, always messing with that old heating pad. I warned her."

Evidence. She was already planting it.

Mark nodded, patting her back. "It' s okay, Chloe. You' re safe now."

He didn' t even look towards my room.

He believed her.

He believed I was a reckless fool who started a fire.

Or worse, an arsonist who had somehow escaped.

He actually looked around, a flicker of suspicion in his eyes, as if I might leap out from behind a fire truck, cackling.

My spirit, or whatever this was, felt a cold rage.

He was my husband. He knew me.

How could he think...

But then I saw the subtle curl of Chloe' s lip as she hid her face in his chest.

Triumph.

She had him. Completely.

I drifted closer, unseen, unheard.

"We need to account for everyone," a firefighter said to Mark. "Was Captain Miller evacuated?"

Mark hesitated. "She... she wasn't in her room when the worst of it hit. Chloe said she saw her moving towards the exit."

Another lie, built on Chloe' s.

Chloe sniffled. "I tried to help her, but the smoke was too thick. She' s so capable, I thought she' d make it."

My Maria, Detective Rodriguez, my old partner, pushed through the crowd.

Her face was a mask of grief and disbelief.

"Sarah? Is Sarah out?" she demanded, her eyes locking onto Mark.

Mark couldn' t meet her gaze. "We' re still looking, Maria. She might have gotten out and is disoriented."

Maria looked at the inferno that had been my room.

Her jaw tightened. "No. Sarah wouldn't just wander off. If she was in there..."

She didn' t finish. She didn' t need to.

I wanted to scream at Mark, to tell Maria the truth.

But I was just a whisper on the wind.

He had abandoned me. He was letting Chloe slander me.

And I, Sarah Miller, the hero cop, had died because the man I saved, the man I married, thought I was faking.

The irony was a bitter taste, even in this formless existence.